{"id":175,"date":"2010-10-01T00:26:25","date_gmt":"2010-10-01T05:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adster.net\/blog\/?p=175"},"modified":"2010-10-01T00:26:26","modified_gmt":"2010-10-01T05:26:26","slug":"days-21-23-costa-rica-or-jurassic-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.adster.net\/blog\/days-21-23-costa-rica-or-jurassic-park\/","title":{"rendered":"Days 21-23 – Costa Rica or Jurassic Park?"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like>

This was the trip I was waiting for. I spent hours planning this entire month, but I put most of my focus specifically on Costa Rica. I was heading there with 3 other people (whom I had yet to meet) and planned everything to a tee.<\/p>\n

I left JFK at the crack of dawn for a layover in Orlando. There, I met my travel partners for the next few days- Wayne, his co-worker MaryJane and her husband Mike who were all awesome people. Seriously, everyone I have met on this trip has been incredible.<\/p>\n

Our plane landed in Costa Rica (which has an great airport, by the way) and we immediately took a smaller regional prop plane to the pacific town of Manual Antonio.<\/p>\n

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Sansa Regional Boarding Pass, it's so cute!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Sansa Air Prop Plane, I called it the "Indiana Jones Plane"<\/p><\/div>\n

The Manual Antonio airport was tiny. As a matter of fact, it was just a concrete runway with nothing else. Seriously. We got a rental car in town and drove to our hotel for our first night: the 727 Fuselage Hotel Room<\/strong>. This was an actual Boeing 727 airplane that was gutted, renovated and turned into a full hotel room complete with 2 bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms, a kitchen, living room and 2 porches, one on either side of the wing.<\/p>\n

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727 Hotel Room. I feel like I'm in LOST!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Oh my GOD! It's a friggan' PLANE!<\/p><\/div>\n

For more photos of this awesome hotel, check out their official webpage here.<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n

For dinner the 4 of us decided to head to a restaurant around the corner that was, ironically, also an airplane. The food there was pretty good, but I’ve had much better on this trip. After dinner, we decided to just hang out at the hotel room all night since we were exhausted and we had to wake up early the next morning.<\/p>\n

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Plane Restaurant down the street from the Plane Hotel<\/p><\/div>\n

We woke up around 6AM the next morning to pack and head out on a\u00a0lengthy\u00a0drive, but before we did we decided to take a small hike since we didn’t get a chance the night before. During the hike, we saw all types of monkeys just swinging through the trees and looking for food. It was pretty incredible to see monkeys hanging out everywhere. One even walked down a tree about 4 feet from us, looked at us, and then continued walking without a second thought. It was pretty amazing to see.<\/p>\n

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Monkey in the trees!<\/p><\/div>\n

We woke up early because we had a 5 hour drive ahead of us in order to make it in time to our next stop, a hike up to the Arenal volcano, the largest active volcano in the world. Thankfully we had a GPS or else I would’ve been completely lost driving in a foreign country. The roads were winding for most of the trip since much of it was mountainside driving. We had a small mishap where the GPS led us right into a river (literally) but we figured it out.<\/p>\n

About 5 hours later we arrived at Arenal National Park area. We got there earlier then we thought so we checked into our lodging for the second night, a hostel called the Arenal Backpackers Resort. It was nice, but definitely not a hotel as I was sharing a room with 6 other people.<\/p>\n

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Arenal Backpackers Resort, our hostel for night 2<\/p><\/div>\n

About an hour later, a guide picked us up for our twilight hike and tour of the Arenal volcano. I was so excited to see real live lava! Our hike included a small walk through the Costa Rican rainforest, where we saw some Howler monkeys. About an hour into the hike, we made it to a plateau that had an amazing view of the volcano.<\/p>\n

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The Arenal Volcano!<\/p><\/div>\n

As the sun was setting, our tour guide told us stories and facts about the volcano. He said that Arenal is a dry volcano, which means the magma isn’t bright red like other\u00a0volcano’s\u00a0and is much less\u00a0noticeable. That disappointed me a little bit, but in all honesty I could sit and look at that volcano for hours. Arenal is one of 133 volcano’s in Costa Rica, but only 5 of them are still active. The tour guide apologized to everyone for not seeing lava, but brought out some alcoholic drinks and told us that we could “feel the lava” if we drank it, which we did. How awesome! I didn’t expect to drink on our hike.<\/p>\n

After the hike, our guide took us to Baldi Hot Springs, which is a natural hot springs heated by the volcano. Think of it as a bunch of hot tubs, all shapes and sizes. It actually reminded me of a water park, complete with water slides and waterfalls, except the water is super hot. Apparently the water was a cold stream until 1968 when the volcano erupted and it’s been naturally hot ever since.<\/p>\n

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Baldo Hot Springs *Stock Photo*<\/p><\/div>\n

We then took a taxi back to the hostel where I met a few more jetters. Apparently this was the place to stay if you wanted to see the volcano!<\/p>\n

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The Arenal Volcano as seen from our hostel<\/p><\/div>\n

The next morning, we got up around 5:30AM because we had to drive another 3 hours to San Jose, Costa Rica in order to catch our flight at noon.<\/p>\n

I have to say, Costa Rica is an amazing place, and I will <\/strong>return there some day. This was the one place I wanted to stay longer. The culture and the scenery are so unique and beautiful. I honestly felt like I was in Jurassic Park at times with the green rolling hills. I’m just glad we didn’t run into a T-Rex.<\/p>\n

Next stop, Portland, Main for some lobster lunch!<\/p>\n